An Unattractive Vampire (19 page)

It took everyone several moments to register all that had been said and done. By the time they had, they were no longer turning to look at a small boy who had murdered their friend; they were instead facing the skeleton that was dusting itself off. Phantom, who was still holding the boy, stared into the gaping eye sockets of Yulric Bile’s skull. The skull grinned back viciously. It couldn’t actually not grin, being a skull, so it grinned extra hard to make the viciousness clear.

“Phantom,” chittered the skull. An impressive accomplishment without lips or vocal cords. “Big fan.”

There was a flash, and Phantom was gone, having been knocked into Sanguina and then into the wall of the next room. Simon had barely begun to fall when Yulric plucked him out of the air.

“Get him,” screamed Berwyn. The vampires readied themselves to fight again. This proved to be a mistake, for once Yulric had set Simon on the ground, he did not ready himself to fight; he simply fought.

The Gorgon went for the holy water. Unfortunately, he’d put the bottle back in one of his trench-coat pockets. By the time he had hold of it, it was too late. A light smack of skeletal fingers sent the glass container flying to the floor, where it shattered. The Gorgon then found himself next to Phantom and the twice-concussed Sanguina.

Berwyn and Cassan took out their crosses and bore down on the ancient vampire from opposite sides. Yulric yowled in pain and frustration. He picked up a glass paperweight from the table, and with as much supernatural force as he could muster under the influence of two crosses, threw it into Berwyn’s groin. Bent over in pain, the young vampire was in no condition to maintain his grip on the cross.

“Hey!” Amanda shouted at the skeleton. It turned as she bore down on it. “That was my mother’s.”

The skeleton Yulric kicked Berwyn a bit to the left, revealing that the useless little knick-knack was intact.

“Okay then. Just . . . try not to break stuff,” replied Amanda. She took the cross from the ground, snapped it in two, and walked to a safe corner.

Cassan approached, one hand grasping his intact cross, the other protecting his intact junk—not the best fighting position. Yulric picked up a couch cushion and tossed it at him. In the split-second impact it blotted out the holy symbol, Yulric ran up and struck the near helpless Cassan in the head. Cassan, too, dropped his cross, but just as the skeleton was about to capitalize on his sucker punch, Nora snatched it from the ground and held the monster at bay.
“AAAAH!”

A bloodcurdling scream rang out, distracting everyone. They all turned just in time to see Victoria—beautiful, busty, full-figured Victoria—fall to pieces before them. Where once she’d stood, there was only dust and ash and Simon.

“No!” Two voices cried out in unison. Neither was a young vampire.

“What did you do?” shouted Amanda.

“What have you done?” shrieked skeleton Yulric. He reached down and sifted through the powder on the floor. It spilled through his fingers with no signs of life.

“I—I killed a vampire,” Simon said in a tone of complete innocence.

“And who asked you to do that?” replied Amanda.

Simon looked at his sister. He hadn’t expected this kind of reaction. In his mind, she should have been proud that her eight-year-old brother could kill a vampire. In a pleading voice, he said, “They were fighting.” He pointed to the red hand mark on her neck. “And they attacked you.”

“That’s no reason to kill her,” scolded Amanda. “I mean, that was Victoria. Victoria! How will we ever know if she was really the woman who bought Cassan as a slave?”

“Or what she did to save him from the Helsings?” added Yulric.

“Or if they’ll stay together when she learns that he turned her last living relative?” concluded Amanda.

Simon peered confused from one to the other. He had defended himself. He had saved them both and all they cared about was a stupid television show.

“Is she really dead?” Amanda asked Yulric, hoping against hope.

“I . . . think so,” he told her, once more turning his attention to the remains. “This doesn’t appear to be a trick or illusion.”

“Well, how did you do it?” she asked him.

“Sigil on the floor, carved with my toe. The curse of dust. One touch and—” He turned to Simon. “What did you do?
Exactly.
”

“I staked her through the heart with this,” he explained, showing them the stake.

“And?” waited Yulric.

“That’s it,” replied Simon.

“You cannot kill a vampyr just by stabbing it through the heart,” Yulric exclaimed.

There was an uncomfortable squirm from the young vampires.

Yulric gaped incredulously. “Really? A stake through the heart? That is all it takes? No removal of the head? No purification by fire? You do not even have to be staked to anything? Just”—he made a stabbing motion—“and you are dead?”

The vampires looked at each other awkwardly. You weren’t really supposed to discuss your weaknesses with the enemy.

“How is this possible?” Yulric roared in frustration. He turned on Simon. “Very well. No more killing, understand?”

Simon made a face. It was not a good face. It was a face that said, “Oh, if only you’d told me earlier.”

“What?” Yulric barked, unaware. He turned to Amanda. “What?”

“I think he killed Lord Dunstan, too,” she explained.

Yulric let out what could only be called an unholy racket. “The traitor! You killed Lord Dunstan before he could return to his evil ways?”

“Lord Dunstan wasn’t going to return to his evil ways,” chimed in a voice from behind him. It was Damien Black. Yulric turned to face the brave little writer.

“Well, why was he collecting the keys of Sekhmet, if he wasn’t going to unleash the blood goddess and sit atop the end as Lord of Destruction?” he asked testily.

“He only said that to gain the Gorgon’s trust. In the end, he would have opened the prison and thrown the Gorgon inside, finally redeeming himself completely,” explained the writer.

“That makes no sense. Why would he do that?” disagreed Yulric.

Amanda knew why.

“No!”
she shouted. “No. No. No. No. No!”

“What?” asked a confused Yulric.

“He does it to save Nora, doesn’t he?” she challenged.

“She is the intended blood sacrifice,” said the writer smugly.

“You’re trying to set Nora up with Dunstan,” she accused. The writer gave a noncommittal shrug, which further set her off. “Nora belongs with Phantom!”

“Well, we’ve set up from the beginning that Phantom and Sasha will end up together,” Damien explained.

“He belongs with Nora.” She began counting on her fingers. “They have known each other longer. They have more in common. They have better chemistry. And Nora is a much stronger character than Sasha is.”

“Not going to happen,” retorted the exasperated writer.

“Weren’t we in the middle of a fight?” interrupted Berwyn.

“In a minute!”
barked Yulric, Amanda, and the writer.

“So, your great plan is to just pawn off Nora on Lord Dunstan?
Dunstan?
” cried Amanda.

“Would you prefer she end up alone?” replied the writer.

“Rather than watch her throw herself at Lord Dunstan? Yeah, I would. I don’t care what he did. He could save the world a thousand times over and you’d still have to give her a lobotomy before she’d choose him.” Amanda turned to Yulric. “You agree with me, right?”

Yulric nodded. “Lord Dunstan is far too powerful to simply fall in love and ‘turn good.’” This last was said with air-quote fingers. He’d figured out how they worked.

“See,” she said.

“He didn’t actually agree with you,” the writer pointed out.

“Well, neither of us thinks Nora and Lord Dunstan should be together,” she spat back.

“Indeed,” agreed Yulric.

“Look, you can complain until you’re blue in the face”—the writer turned to Yulric—“or until you have a face, but this is not a democracy. It’s a monarchy. A dictatorship.” He lifted the concussed Sanguina to her feet. “And we’re in charge. We control it. We are God.”

“We are?” Sanguina eyed her omnipotent hands.

“We decide how the story goes,” Damien continued. “We decide how the characters act. If we say they fall in love, they fall in love. If we say they turn good, they turn good. I once invented a hopping curse because Phantom pissed me off and I wanted to watch him hop on one leg for an entire episode. Which got me nominated for a Hugo Award by the way. So, let me be clear, Phantom and Nora are never going to be together. Lord Dunstan is never . . . was never going to be evil again. And by the end of this season, Dunstan and Nora were going to get it on and make little vampire babies.”

Silence fell. A silence that can be broken only by someone without a clue.

“Vampyrs cannot have babies,” Yulric corrected him.

“They can if I say they can!” yelled the writer in frustration.

“Really? You were going to have vampire babies?” said Amanda, disgusted.

“No, I—”

“You were going to put a pregnancy belly on me? On this?” Nora questioned, outlining her figure as she spoke.

“You weren’t going to be pregnant, okay?” assured the writer. “I was just making a point.”

“Okay, because I don’t want to have to wear a one-piece for
The Phantom Vampire Mysteries Magazine
swimsuit special.”

“You won’t,” said the writer. “You won’t.”

Silence fell again.

“So, are we done?” asked Phantom. “Can we fight now?”

“Certainly,” replied Yulric.

“Yeah,” said Damien.

“You’re mine, writer boy,” growled Amanda.

“Well then . . . ,” said Phantom dramatically. “Here we go.”

“No killing!”
Yulric and Amanda shouted at Simon. He nodded with a bit of a pout.

And with that, the fight began again in earnest.

Berwyn, Phantom, and Nora went for skeleton Yulric—encircling, pecking, and generally trying to stay out of arm’s reach of the great old vampire. Cassan and the Gorgon charged Simon—the former grief-stricken at the loss of his on-screen wife and offscreen girlfriend, the latter just now remembering he was missing his favorite celebrity dance competition show.

This left the two writers for Amanda. While one of them attacked what turned out to be a coatrack, the second lunged forward to grab her, unsuccessfully. He might have been supernaturally fast and strong, but Amanda was a woman with a nighttime job, who had watched
The Karate Kid
at least a hundred times growing up. Damien Black reached his intended quarry just in time to have his already injured leg swept out from under him. He fell hard.

With her opponent on the floor clutching his ankle, Amanda spared a glance to make sure her brother was okay. Miraculously, not only was he fine but his vampires were shrinking back from him, holding their groins. Clearly they had forgotten a basic rule—that an eight-year-old will always find a way to hit you in the nuts. A flash of green light and glimpse of something tentacled told her Yulric was still alive, too.

Quickly, Amanda ran over to where Sanguina Marlowe was losing her fight with the coatrack, snatched up her purse, and began rummaging. She passed over a compact, lipstick, wallet, keys, individual cough drops, gum, gum wrappers, gum wrappers with used pieces of gum in them, pens, crayons, Kleenex, used Kleenex, napkins, wet wipes, feminine-hygiene products, hair ties, hair clips, a pink wig in a baggy, fishnet stockings, regular stockings, an extra lace bra, an extra plain bra, a white tank top, her cell phone, the latest
Phantom Vampire
novelization (coincidentally written by Damien Black), a half-eaten donut, a banana, a spoon, and a bag of M&M’S she’d forgotten she had. Finally, at the bottom of the bag, among the loose change and crumbs, she found what she was looking for.

Wham!
She flew back into the wall. The fact that she barely missed hitting Sanguina was a lucky break for the vampire, though not for Amanda, whose head bounced off a stud instead. Her vision filled with light, then darkness. It was a few seconds before she realized her eyelids were shut. She opened them to discover she could still see, though it was kind of fuzzy. And spinny. And starry. Having lost her contacts would account for only one of these.

Something reached down and, with a bulge of muscles, lifted her up with unnatural strength. Its bared teeth shone bright; its eyes burned with malice. Whatever this blurry, ominous figure was, it was truly terrifying.

Then, Amanda blinked, and the apparition resolved itself back into the attractive-but-twerpy little writer again.

He held her by the throat and quipped, “What about Nora and Dunstan now? Any thoughts?”

Amanda did have one thought.
I’m getting really sick of being picked up by the neck.
She raised her hand to his ear and pressed the button of her mini foghorn.

The foghorn was part of the rape-prevention defense package her brother had given her when he was four.
⁴³
It was meant to audibly incapacitate an attacker with sound loud enough to cause physical pain. An attacker with normal hearing, that is. As for attackers with supernatural hearing . . .

The writer fell to the ground clawing at his ears and screaming till his voice was raw. Or he may have been screaming that loud only because he couldn’t hear himself. Amanda didn’t know nor did she care. She just pressed the button again. And again. And again. Her opponent went from kneeling, to crawling, to thrashing on the floor.

“I think Nora and Dunstan is a stupid idea!” shouted Amanda, her voice a bit raspy from being choked, twice. She punctuated her words by hitting the bullhorn. “Did you hear that? I said it’s stupid.
Stupid!
Nora belongs with Phantom. With Phantom!”

She went to hit the button again, but it was snatched away from her. Amanda looked up. Yulric’s empty eye sockets stared back at her. One skeletal hand held the bullhorn, the other protected the hole where an ear would be on a flesh-covered face.

“No more!”
Yulric said, quite a bit louder than was normally necessary.

“Sorry,” she apologized. She’d forgotten that the one with the most supernaturally acute hearing was on her side. Phantom, Berwyn, and Nora also looked relieved. Phantom gave a nod of thanks to Yulric that turned into something else. It was an anticipatory stare, directed, not at him, but at her.